The October issue features interviews with Kij Johnson and Stanley Schmidt, coverage of Chicon 7 with lots of photos, and reviews of short fiction and new books by M. John Harrison, Kate Griffin, John Varley, Charles Yu, Tiffany Trent, and many others.

It's entertaining enough, if a bit disquieting at times and too violent to recommend for a date night, and the film can be thought-provoking in both ways that its writer-director anticipated and ways that he probably did not anticipate.

Gary K. Wolfe's Library of America volume American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, six Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin, three ebook anthologies by Ellen Datlow, two titles by Robert Silverberg, and titles by Paul Levinson and Cordwainer Smith

The most unusual story in Windeye, Brian Evenson's outstanding new collection of short fiction, is devoid of the reality slips and nods to the supernormal that distinguish the other 24 stories in the book. In fact, it doesn't even read like fiction.

This generous, stimulating, mammoth compendium commemorates the fifty-two years of Neal Barrett Jr.'s short-story production, and arrives none too soon, while the author is still a sprightly young eighty-three-years old.

So I ended up with dual lives and ways of being and speaking around different groups. I sort of became different people. I learned how to tell some stories and how to lie. That was probably helpful to becoming a writer: learning how to be fast on your feet with the right story at the right time.

Lo moves into the territory of The X-Files without a hitch, crafting a well-developed character in Reese and making us believe her slow discovery that she is now part of something larger. All the twists and turns you'd expect from a good SF thriller are here...

Rae Carson's The Crown of Embers and other YA novels by Malinda Lo and Maggie Stiefvater, two books about J.R.R. Tolkien, collections from Hampton Fancher and Ursula K. Le Guin, and other titles by Edward, Erikson, Kristoff, Leslie, Trahan, and Weber

Books have always been an escape for me  from reality, from the world. There were wonderful children's librarians at the Parkman branch of the Detroit Public Library who opened the world of books and reading to me. Going there was a way to escape the world, and that's where I discovered science fiction.

Bestsellers from specialty bookstores are led by John Scalzi's Redshirts, George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, David R. George III's Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn, and Christian Dunn's Warhammer 40K: The Horus Heresy: The Primarchs.

Crackpot Palace is the work of a writer who knows where to look for that magic, and who is firmly at the forefront of those writers, emerging mostly during the last couple of decades, who seem utterly comfortable with inventing their own genres as they go along.

September New and Notable books include a collection of digital art, novels by Aaronovitch, Brandon, Milford, Parker, Payton, Stross, and Williams, and collections and anthologies from Carroll, Guran, Hoffman, Horton, Kiernan, and Stephenson.

The September issue features interviews with John Scalzi, Nancy Pearl, and Richard Kadrey, a new column by Cory Doctorow, and reviews of short fiction and new books by Jeffrey Ford, N.K. Jemisin, Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross, Brian Evenson, Jim C. Hines, and many others.

I'll be blunt about it: humor is one of the great taboos of science fiction. It's not just an issue of being able to write it well. When I first started writing, I was told, 'You canít sell a humorous science fiction novel.' I honestly feel that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was an extinction-level event for humor in science fiction.